JUNGKOOK POV
My wolf wasn't completely satisfied since its real wish was that I tuck him in my bed, in
my arms, after claiming him.
Closing the deal, so to speak.
He believed the trick of the moon, he believed the lie of
his blue sheen.
This man was human and
getting caught up in the Omega
Moon didn't change that.
My wolf needed to calm down and deal with the facts, the
fact that pointed to him being most definitely not our mate.
Wolves didn't deal in fact and
he was on edge, begging me
to claim the man.
It was not going to happen.
I needed to calm my wolf
down and having the human under our roof was a heck of
a good start.
It just felt better to me, too.
And Dalsu was more than just someone else's kid.
He belonged to my mate and therefore was also under my protection.
Except a human could not be
my mate.
Sure, he'd somehow managed
to have a wolf kid but that
wasn't on him, not if he was
a human.
I settled down to try to watch some TV but the thoughts kept running around my head.
If he wasn't a wolf, his former spouse, mate, whatever was.
I flipped off the movie or game show—hell I didn't even know what had been chattering away in front of me and stood up.
I started for my bed but veered off and found myself at the
small corner desk in my
bedroom that served me as
an office.
I didn't do as much work that required one as Joon but I
did have a laptop hooked to
the pack network for when I needed it.
And I wasn't going to sleep tonight until I figured out the story behind that cub sleeping upstairs.
It was completely against the rules for a wolf to marry or
mate with a human.
Jimin was human.
I'd pretty well swear to that.
Dalsu was for sure a wolf.
Or half a wolf but the genetics were fully active.
That meant in all logic that
Jimin's late wife was pack somewhere. Not this pack.
If one of our females of my generation had broken this
rule, I'd know.
Everyone would know.
We weren't such a big group
that we didn't know everyone.
The pack subscribed to a very specific sort of ancestry site
and I settled in to try to figure out who he'd been married to.
I didn't expect to have much
luck since she had to have
been rogue.
But I began with pack marriage records and birth records, eliminating more than finding.
Then I used some less than
well-known methods to get deeper into their files.
Joon had shown me how to do this a while back but it wasn't
the kind of thing many could manage.
He'd also told me not to do it unless it was for pack business because if I got caught, it
could be a big problem.
I would do my best not to get caught but for my peace of
mind, I had to know.
Hours later, I hadn't found a thing, no records of any
rogues or runaway females.
I might need to expand my search to packs in other areas.
Maybe even other states.
My back ached, shoulders
were tense from hunching
over the laptop but I didn't
want to stop.
Just as I had decided to end it
for tonight and look in other regions tomorrow, I spotted
the weirdest line in a census.
It was a scanned document
and looked very faded.
I made it as big as I could
and was able to make out
the name Ari.
Had he said his wife's name?
I didn't think so but I had another idea.
I searched for the name Ari
in the other pack records and found a birth notice and many other mentions then nothing.
Ari was the alpha apparent.
She was beautiful and smart
and the hope of her generations.
And then poof.
She fell off the page as if
she'd never existed.
They must have thrown her
out.
And I could find no note at all
of her child, if she'd had one.
On a hunch I went to human marriage records and found
Jimin and Ari's marriage certificate and with their
first and last names, a birth
certificate for Park Dalsu.
The story was clear, if hard
to understand.
Her pack had shunned her for her choice, I could see no
other interpretation.
They had not done
worse, which some would.
I'd heard bad things.
But as it turned out, she'd
only had a few years of happiness before the death certificate was issued, marked with the sad cause of death
of a beautiful, vibrant wife
and mother.
It nearly broke my heart to
think of that little one growing
up without one of his parents.
It couldn't be more unfair.
And more frightening.
Because even as my wolf was chanting his desire to claim
Jimin, I was realizing that
Dal lay in a whole different
kind of danger.
How long before the pack
came to take him?
As far as they were concerned, he was the child of the heir to their line. Right?
They would consider him their property and not hesitate to
do whatever it took to bring
Dalsu back into the fold.
Did they know of him?
If not, it was only a matter of time before they did.
With a chill, I realized that if
Jimin had not brought him
here...
No, it was too terrible to think
of.
I closed the lid of my laptop as
if that could make all of this
go away.
My wolf's pleasure at having
who he considered his mate under our roof was now
colored with fear and anger.
He was pacing inside me and
it was all I could do not to shift...until I finally gave in
and did.
My wolf patrolled the outside
of our home for the rest of the night and once the sun came
up, I shifted back and realized
I had nothing to make
breakfast with.
Slipping out of the house, I headed for the alpha's kitchen
to beg some things to cook for
Dalsu and Jimin then veered
off to make a quick stop at
the healer's.
He was just waking up but he made tea hopefully just regular tea and had me sit down and
tell him what I'd learned.
I think I half hoped he'd say I was overthinking.
That Dalsu's mother's pack wasn't going to come for him.
That they either wouldn't want him after what his mother did
and because he was half
human or even better, they'd never even know he existed.
"So, you see, they wrote her
off." I told him.
"Shunned her and never had
a thing to do with her once
she hooked up with Jimin."
"What are the odds they even know what happened with
her after that?"
But Trenton was deadly serious.
"They know."
"They may have thrown her
out but that particular pack
has a long memory."
"And they will feel that they
have every right to claim dal."
"But we can't allow that."
I was horrified and my wolf enraged.
"We have to protect them."
"I'll go right to Joon and tell
him we have to keep them
from taking away the boy."
"He belongs here with us."
"And why is that?"
Trenton set down his teacup
and cocked his head.
"Why does a child whose
lineage is with another pack belong to us? Is there some
thing you want to tell me?"
"No." I couldn't admit my wolf wanted a human for our mate, and I sure as shit wasn't going
to tell him what I saw—what I thought I saw the night before.
"But Jimin and Dalsu are at
least for the moment under
our protection, aren't they?"
"It would break his heart if someone took his child."
"And your heart?"
He was entirely too perceptive
but no matter what my wolf wanted, I couldn't break the rules.
"I would be very sad for him."
"Well now is not the time to
draw Joon into this matter."
"He's asked you to help train
the child, right?"
I nodded, clutching my
still-full teacup.
"Drink that." Trenton urged.
"It's growing cold."
None of his drinks were
palatable cold.
It was no ordinary beverage clearly but it would be good
for me.
I downed it and headed over
to find some bread and
bacon, eggs, maybe juice.
Trenton was right about the timing.
I couldn't bother Joon with
my personal worries at the moment.
Not with all the fuss over our guests.
I'd have to do my best to
protect them until a better
plan could be formulated.